Misreading the messages

Prof Hamid Ghany The de­ci­sion by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to is­sue two in­de­pen­dence mes­sages has caused many heads to ex­plode over do­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent­ly. There is noth­ing that says that a prime min­is­ter who is al­so a po­lit­i­cal leader of their par­ty can­not ad­dress the na­tion with one prime min­is­te­r­i­al mes­sage and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ad­dress their par­ty mem­bers with a lead­er­ship mes­sage. Some par­ties may do it one way if they be­lieve that the State and the par­ty are one and the same, while oth­ers may do it dif­fer­ent­ly if they recog­nise that the State and the par­ty are two dif­fer­ent en­ti­ties. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had a sep­a­rate mes­sage to their mem­bers from their leader, while the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment wrapped both in­to one. The PNM fly­er for in­de­pen­dence un­der the head­ing 'From Dr Er­ic Williams To Pen­ny Beck­les' stat­ed bold­ly: 'Found­ed by Dr Er­ic Williams in 1956—a po­lit­i­cal move­ment for na­tion­al lib­er­a­tion, self-gov­ern­ment and the ad­vance­ment of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, root­ed in the dig­ni­ty and as­pi­ra­tion of the de­scen­dants of African an­ces­tors.' This in­de­pen­dence com­men­tary es­caped the furore that was cre­at­ed over the Prime Min­is­ter's mes­sage to her par­ty mem­bers. That mes­sage nev­er once spoke about any eth­nic group in the so­ci­ety, yet all man­ner of per­sons in­ter­pret­ed the mes­sage to mean rur­al In­do-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans. In a sto­ry by Akash Sama­roo in last Thurs­day's Guardian, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha is re­port­ed to have said: 'The coun­try is al­ready racial­ly di­vid­ed as it is. In my opin­ion, yes, this has just added to that di­vi­sion …' He placed all of his at­ten­tion on Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment and com­plete­ly avoid­ed the text of the PNM's in­de­pen­dence greet­ing to the na­tion. For­mer me­dia ed­i­tor and in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, Suni­ty Ma­haraj, is re­port­ed by Sama­roo as fol­lows: 'Suni­ty Ma­haraj de­scribed the In­de­pen­dence mes­sage as 'in­ac­cu­rate' and 'full of dog whis­tles', ar­gu­ing that those de­fend­ing it were at­tempt­ing to 'de­fend the in­de­fen­si­ble'.' Re­al­ly? Is that how analy­sis is done, by at­tack­ing the leader of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty with their own in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what con­sti­tutes 'the in­de­fen­si­ble', while com­plete­ly ig­nor­ing the overt state­ment from the ma­jor op­po­si­tion par­ty that ex­plic­it­ly speaks to the de­scen­dants of one seg­ment of so­ci­ety for in­de­pen­dence. There are many peo­ple who nev­er thought that Per­sad-Bisses­sar would ever see the cor­ri­dors of the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre again, and they bet the farm on it. They mis­led their par­ty and their fol­low­ers in­to the val­ley of po­lit­i­cal death, with oth­ers cheer­ing them on and some even cross­ing the floor in cel­e­bra­tion. When the dis­be­lief hit them on the night of April 28 last year, they were dumb­found­ed. They were warned by their par­ty mem­ber­ship that the twin-head­ed hy­dra lead­er­ship was po­lit­i­cal sui­cide. How­ev­er, it seemed that pleas­ing Maduro in Cara­cas with a suit­able suc­ces­sor was more im­por­tant than pleas­ing their par­ty mem­ber­ship. They all scorned Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­cause they and their fi­nanciers al­ways be­lieved that she was des­tined to lose. Some trade unions gam­bled on her like­ly suc­cess and oth­ers spurned the op­por­tu­ni­ty to join the 'coali­tion of in­ter­ests' be­cause they dis­be­lieved it. The mes­sage to the par­ty was about the work­ing class and un­der­priv­i­leged roots of the mass mem­ber­ship of the par­ty, and she promised them that she would nev­er desert them. How that be­comes a racist mes­sage when thou­sands of peo­ple of all races who came from those same un­der­priv­i­leged cir­cum­stances know ex­act­ly what she is talk­ing about. When Dr Rudrunath Capildeo de­sert­ed his sup­port­ers af­ter in­de­pen­dence in 1962 to take up a job as a lec­tur­er in math­e­mat­ics at Lon­don Uni­ver­si­ty in the UK, Dr Er­ic Williams had free rein to shape the so­ci­ety how he want­ed it. He put CLR James un­der house ar­rest in March 1965; he banned Stoke­ly Carmichael (lat­er Kwame Ture) from re­turn­ing to the land of his birth in 1967; he used Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) to lock up the Black Pow­er pro­test­ers in 1970 who want­ed to re­move the PNM, and some­how Per­sad-Bisses­sar's mes­sage is about race. Re­al­ly? It has al­ways been about the work­ing class. When the po­lit­i­cal ge­nius of Patrick Man­ning suc­cess­ful­ly used PNM fi­nanciers to fund the cre­ation of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) to split the UNC votes in the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tions, it was Bas­deo Pan­day who saw right through it and called In­do-COP sup­port­ers 'knife and fork In­di­ans'. Kam­la's coali­tion of in­ter­ests was about the work­ing class, not race. Pan­day's 'knife and fork In­di­ans' was about class, not race. Kam­la has bro­ken new ground that has changed the face of pol­i­tics to­day. The PNM has on­ly it­self to blame for be­liev­ing in a twin-head­ed hy­dra in­stead of a coali­tion of in­ter­ests. Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is a Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.